> I’d wager a PhD is probably the most reliable way to effect real change in your mind as an adult
Not sure how you define change, but I'm pretty sure one experience with psychedelics is going to effect more change in about 4 hours than a PhD in 4 years. Not the same type of change, granted.
I'm three years into a PhD and during that time have tried some very potent psychedelics (psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, DMT and mescaline). Fearless experimentation - nothing more than science, right? :)
The change I've experienced throughout my PhD (that is, becoming a confident researcher with at least some depth to his ideas) has probably been more intense and almost certainly more long-lasting than my psychedelic experiences. Nurturing an uncomfortable familiarity with the immense limits of my knowledge, as well as regularly pushing myself to exhaustion in order to overcome those limits - inch by milimiter by angstrom - has completely transformed me as a person.
If anything psychedelics had the effect of making me believe that I had become enlightened to various true-natures-of-everything whilst providing me very little concrete understanding as to why this was the case. Much of the personal change that followed my experiences were less due to the substances and more due to my own desire for those experiences to mean something in the long run. Psychs are great and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly for those who have the courage (note: that's not to say that the classical psychedelics are dangerous - they're only dangerous for people who are scared of them). It is my opinion that one should not start believing that these things anything more than chemicals that make you feel a certain way, or help you along the path to doing so.
At least according to Feynman many of his successful colleagues said psychedelics helped them with their imagination. But I’ve not heard of anyone doing great science (or great anything really) because they went on a trip. It looks more like the Lu just get happier about their life but nothing else.
> But I’ve not heard of anyone doing great science (or great anything really) because they went on a trip.
Kary Mullis claims to have come up with the idea for PCR while on an LSD trip, though he also said a lot of nonsense so I'm not sure you should be too much weight on that.
But he also mentioned in one of his popular books about his own experiments in this regard that he stopped playing with these things because he considered the health of his brain too valuable for that.
Not sure how you define change, but I'm pretty sure one experience with psychedelics is going to effect more change in about 4 hours than a PhD in 4 years. Not the same type of change, granted.